Insomni'hack 2020 is CANCELLED

A month and a half has passed since we were forced to postpone Insomni’hack 2020 from the originally planned dates in March to the new ones in June. During this time, things have significantly evolved over the globe and while Switzerland seems to be heading in the right direction, the current situation is still far from being compatible with the organisation of any type of public event.

Current restrictions imposed by the Swiss Federal Government don’t allow for the organization of any event until at least June 8th and – honestly – even if they did, we would definitely not feel comfortable doing so. Besides, all major events and festivals planned for Summer 2020 in Switzerland have already been cancelled by their organizers.

In view of this, we must unfortunately cancel the organization of Insomni’hack for June 2020 and with it any attempt to organize Insomni’hack later this year.

Despite our efforts and our willingness to organize a 2020 edition of insomni’hack, the unpredictable nature of the situation makes us believe that it would be unreasonable to plan for any further attempt. We all love attending a good security conference but only when we feel perfectly safe there, be it as a participant, a speaker or a member of staff. The wise and reasonable decision is thus to wait for the return of such conditions.

From a practical perspective, all purchased tickets for the conferences and registrations for the workshops will be refunded in the upcoming weeks. There is no need to contact us any more to ask for a refund as we will initiate a global reimbursement.

The good news is that we will obviously be back in 2021! While organizing this year’s edition, we made new contacts, had new ideas for the event and - of course - these will be used to make Insomni’hack 2021 (as for any edition of Insomni’hack) bigger and better than the previous ones!

Following our usual schedule, the next edition of Insomni’hack will thus be held in the first quarter of 2021, however the final dates are still under discussion and will be announced in the coming months (expect July 2020).

As always, you can follow us on Twitter for general announcements and information.

See you all in 2021 and until then, stay safe and take care of yourselves!

- Your Insomni'hack Team (April 21st 2020)

Insomni'hack is postponed to June 2020

We invest a lot of time and effort to make Insomni’Hack one of the best cybersecurity events in Europe. So close to the due date, we have accomplished a lot to make this year even better than the previous one. We have had record registrations for the conferences and a CTF sold-out some time ago already.

As previously announced, we've been closely monitoring the COVID-19 situation and have expanded a lot of resources on the subject. As part of our decision-making process, we have also recently polled you and collected 400+ replies showing a desire to attend the event of more than 70%.

Whilst we are not affected by any formal ban under current measures taken by the Swiss Government, we expect these conditions to possibly tighten in the near future, and independently of those, we consider that it is our responsibility to ensure we deliver an event in complete serenity and prevent exposing you, our speakers and our staff to any unnecessary risk.

Given the steady rise of infections in Switzerland and the drastic measures taken not only by our government but also by neighbouring countries, we believe that there is too much uncertainty in the next two weeks and that the right decision is to cancel the event now.

Because of this, Insomni’hack 2020 as planned for March is cancelled in its entirety.

However, we have not been standing still and have been working hard on re-scheduling a similar event (same venue and format) for June 4th and 5th 2020 (with workshops beforehand). Your purchased tickets remain valid for this new event.

We are sorry for this situation and hope that we can count on your presence in June to help us make Insomni'hack 2020 a success.

- Your Insomni'hack Team (March 6th 2020)

FAQ

We are in early discussions with the speakers as we would like to maintain all the currently announced talks at the new dates.

However, depending on the speakers' availability and constraints, we will obviously need to make some arrangements and the exact talk schedule may vary significantly from what was planned for March. Nevertheless, our goal is to propose a talk line-up with equivalent quality.

If you have purchased tickets for Insomni’hack 2020 and cannot attend the event at the new dates, we will refund your ticket at the same price as it has been purchased. Note however that we cannot be held responsible for any other costs (credit card taxes, travel tickets, hotel reservations, …) that you may have and won’t compensate for any of those.

Like for the rest of the event, we will do our best to reschedule the current workshops to the new dates in June. However, depending on the availability of the trainers, some workshops may not be available in June and, on the other hand, some new ones may be proposed.

If you are currently registered for a workshop, we suggest that you hold on a few weeks until we can provide more information about the new workshop lineup. Chances are that your workshop will be available in June, and in that case your registration will remain valid.

If your workshop is not available in June, you can transfer your registration to one of the other workshops or, if nothing fits your needs, we can then cancel and refund your registration.

Yes. We will cancel all current tickets for the CTF and open a new registration. As a consequence of that, if you were registered for March’s CTF and plan on coming at the new date you will need to register again.

If you have already purchased tickets for the March conference, they remain valid for June and you don't need to do anything else. If you haven't purchased your tickets yet, we will re-open the registration shortly.

First of all, we highly encourage you to take the time to look at the dates, the program of talks that will be announced in the upcoming weeks and then only ask for a refund if you cannot or do not want to attend the event. PLEASE avoid “cancel & re-book”. By the way, there will be no early-bird tickets for June so hang on to your tickets 😉

However, if after considering this you want a refund of your ticket, please follow the procedure below.

Refund procedure

- Your ticket number (e.g. T345E08513O093645) - Your full name (as used for ticket purchase) - The e-mail address provided during ticket purchase

Note that refund requests lacking all the information above will be ignored.

We will process the refund requests in batches (once a week), so a reasonable delay is to be expected. Once the refund is validated and processed, the corresponding amount will be credited directly by our ticketing provider (Weezevent) on the same credit card that was used for payment.

About the event

Insomni'hack is a security conference and hacking contest founded and organized by SCRT S.A. since 2008.

While it started as a very small contest in 2008, Insomni'hack has become over the years one of the largest information security events in Switzerland.